When checking out of an InterContinental Hotel in Toronto a few weeks ago, I encountered a new tactic in the sphere of social-media marketing. The woman at reception inquired about my stay, and I replied that it was pleasant (especially after she let me delay my checkout so I could get some work done in the room). Then she handed me the document above and explained that if I left a review on TripAdvisor, the hotel would provide me with a complimentary upgrade the next time I stayed there. I thought it was a very interesting approach to seeding reviews, and something I’m sure we will all see a lot more of in the years ahead.
Obviously, when a hotel rewards a customer just for leaving a review, it’s got to be Marketing with Meaning. The first, obvious benefit is that the customer has a chance to get a free upgrade at the hotel just for leaving a review and printing it out. A nice freebie such as this is always appreciated, and the hotel benefits by potentially locking in future stays by a recurring business traveler. The cost of an upgrade is likely very small as long as there are rooms available.
But the other great thing about asking for customer feedback is that this request itself makes people feel better about how they choose to spend their money at a key moment of truth. When we sign the bill at a restaurant or check out of a hotel, we are making both conscious and unconscious decisions about whether we would come back again. By visibly showing she cared with a physical card and direct offer, the hotel receptionist was planting a positive seed in my mind.
Flash forward to when someone such as me logs on to TripAdvisor to leave a review, and one is predisposed to want to say something positive. After all, the hotel cared so much that it was encouraging me to offer my opinion in a positive place. Even if things were not great, people will be more likely to give a company the benefit of the doubt in such circumstances. This reminds me of a study I read about how doctors who are nicer to their patients are significantly less likely to be sued for malpractice. And if all else fails, the fact that you have to print off your feedback and show it to the receptionist when you return means that you would be embarrassed to be too negative in a review.
I am a firm believer that the act of leaving a review is one of the strongest ways for “marketing” to make an impact on customers’ brand loyalty. Reviews take time, conscious thought, and a realization that what you say will be read by other people—forever. This combination of factors builds strong, positive neural links in the mind. A traditional advertising “impression,” which leaves the short-term memory bank quickly, pales in comparison to this kind of connection.
And, of course, the final and possibly most important marketing benefit of this review program is that the InterContinental Yorkville has a much higher chance of receiving multiple, positive reviews on TripAdvisor, a leading online resource for trip planning. Reviews are rapidly becoming the main way that customers discover and decide on hotel choices. And if you really think about it, maybe the InterContinental should be putting 100% of its marketing budget into seeking more and better reviews. Millions of dollars of print ads in Sky magazine and billboards in airports can’t touch the power of landing “above the fold” on a review website where people are in buying mode. How would you allocate your dollars to ensure better reviews? Easy, you just hire the best people you can find and ensure that guests love their experience. In other words, you put your marketing dollars into the service itself.
I don’t know how long this program has been in use by the hotel, but it has a nice spot on the site as of this blog post. It is rated #6 out of more than 100 hotels in Toronto, and it has 167 total reviews.
If there’s anything negative here, it is that the users of TripAdvisor might not be getting the true, impartial reviews that they are expecting when people are biased by positive seeding such as this example. Interestingly, a growing body of examples shows that the average rating on product- and service-review sites is 4.0 out of 5.0 stars. In other words, everyone is above average when it comes to ratings. (We call this the Lake Wobegon effect.) But at the end of the day people are smart, and we all learn to seek multiple opinions and assume that people are predisposed to be either overly enthusiastic or negative in their reviews.
Kudos to the InterContinental Hotel in Yorkville/Toronto. I plan on staying there the next time I’m in town and encourage you to do the same.
(For more on the power of product reviews, check out this post on an email follow-up we did on a Healthy Choice coupon offer.)
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I must disagree with the positive assessment of materially pre-rewarding customers for positive reviews.
“[u]sers of TripAdvisor might not be getting the true, impartial reviews” is the biggest drawback of this tactic. Rather than marketing with meaning, it renders the reviews disingenuous and meaningless. Rewarding customers for business is one thing, bribing them to write positive reviews is another.
How much more trustworthy and confident would the hotel appear if staff simply asked every customer about her experience and then invited her to post a review, any review, on TripAdvisor? How much harder would the hotel work to satisfy every customer?
As a business you can learn so much more, and improve so much more, from honest feedback from your customers. What’s more, moving feedback from the social sphere – do us a favor and write what you think (the 1st and 3rd para in the scanned document) – to the market sphere – here’s an upgrade for a positive review – completely shifts the nature of the relationship with the customer. Would you rather have your customers frequent your business because they like you and your product or because you pay them? I say drop the 2nd para in the scanned document and let your customers take care of you.
The tactic also misleads TripAdvisor users as to the nature, authenticity, and trustworthiness of the review. Knowing the hotel bribes customers for positive reviews, I, for one, will avoid the hotel profiled here.
I just published an article on http://www.HospitalityMarketingBlog.com this morning entitled “Seven Secrets to Getting The Most Out of TripAdvisor.
It contains some practical advice including point #6 which states – “Understand TripAdvisor” – which IC certainly does not.
If InterContinental took the time to really understand TA they would know “offering incentives such as discounts, upgrades, or any special treatment in exchange for reviews is considered Fraud by TripAdvisor.
And they punish behavior like this by seriously downgrading the hotel’s ranking – just the opposite of IC’s original intend. And they can get flagged with a notice that TA suspects some reviews to be bogus.
Check it out at
http://www.tripadvisor.com/help/what_is_considered_fraud
It pays to know what you’re doing. Obviously IC does not.
Thank you for the smart and insightful responses, Peter and Madigan. You are swaying me more toward the point that encouraging testimonials may be non-meaningful. However, please note that Intercontinental is rewarding any review – positive, negative or indifferent. So it is closer to what you are looking for, Peter, than you originally said.
And Madigan, you bring up a very powerful point – that Trip Advisor has a right to police reviews in any way it desires. Just as Google refines its algorithm to keep people from gaming its search rankings, Trip Advisor must ensure that companies are not artificially promoting positive reviews.
I hope that someone from Intercontinental reads this post and reacts accordingly. OR, I hope that Trip Advisor reads this and gently informs the company of the fraud policy, and offers to provide insights on what the hotel can do to better please its customers, and in turn earn positive/impartial reviews. Google coaches companies on how to create useful content that will lead it to reward it with search ranking – it would be nice if Trip Advisor took the same approach. The result in both cases is more meaningful marketing that helps the media company, brand, and customers.
Bob
Bob – before they handed you the upgrade slip they qualified you as someone with positive things to say. Do you think you would have received a slip if you complained about the hotel? I think not.
“The woman at reception inquired about my stay, and I replied that it was pleasant (especially after she let me delay my checkout so I could get some work done in the room). Then she handed me the document above and explained that if I left a review on TripAdvisor, the hotel would provide me with a complimentary upgrade the next time I stayed there.”
Yep, good point!
On that same note, the first sentence in the scanned document is “We are so pleased you enjoyed your stay.” Then they ask for you to write about that enjoyable experience and if you do, you get an upgrade. Combined with what you were told by the receptionist, it is an attempt to sway you toward writing a positive comment in exchange for a reward.
Hello –
As Madigan has pointed out above, offering incentives for reviews is strictly against TripAdvisor policy:
http://www.tripadvisor.com/help/i_was_offered_an_incentive_for_a_review_is_that_ok
http://www.tripadvisor.com/help/can_i_ask_my_guests_to_write_reviews
We do encourage properties to remind travelers to write reviews—fresh reviews benefit other travelers as well as hotels— but without offering incentives. One of the reasons we created our Owners’ Center for registered owners in 2009 was to make policies such as this as transparent as possible. The Owners’ Center also provides several tools to appropriately encourage reviews, including a downloadable reminder flyer, an email reminder, and a review collection widget for property websites.
Whenever a traveler reports that they’ve been offered an incentive, we follow up with the property in question, and we will do so in this case. Thanks, Bob, for bringing this to our attention.
April Robb
TripAdvisor
TripAdvisor may, of course, write their own rules. That’s stipulated.
Is there an ethical problem with offering incentives to guests who write reviews? Only if the incentive is based on the tone of the review.
TA’s motives may be pure, but in the long run … everybody wants the cookie.
What a dumb incentive scheme. What’s to stop anyone printing off any old review and waving it under reception’s nose? Reviews on TA are anonymous so nobody can tell who wrote them!
The hotel should just have screened its customers as described and asked the happy ones to post reviews. That’s permitted and is how most hotels work the system. It’s also why many savvy people no longer trust reviews on TripAdvisor.
This is merely an attempt by a hotel to regain some control, or at least influence, over what’s being said about them online.
That said, rather than channel resources toward “stacking the deck”, which may lead to guest expectations the hotel cannot meet (and thereby generate negative reviews), hotels would be better off channeling efforts toward creating an experience so exceptional that guests feel compelled to write a favorable review. See example here: http://bit.ly/4Usouj
Question for TripAdvisor: Can a hotel thank a guest for writing a favorable review with an amenity or upgrade on their next stay? (by flagging guest profile of those who give real name with review). Not an incentive before the review is written, but a random, unsolicited reward after-the-fact?
Hi Daniel –
Incentives for reviews are against TripAdvisor’s policy, regardless of when they are offered: http://www.tripadvisor.com/help/what_is_considered_fraud. Hotels are welcome to acknowledge reviews — both positive and negative — through a management response. However, offering a tangible reward after a good review has been published may very well impact how a traveler reviews future hotel stays. If travelers think there is a likelihood of a perk for a favorable review, their feedback is no longer unbiased.
And if the traveler liked the property enough to write them a positive review in the first place, they’ll likely return next time they’re in town, upgrade or not. As you discussed in your recent blog post (http://bit.ly/bBCEn4), good old-fashioned hospitality is really the key.
Thanks –
April Robb
TripAdvisor